The Woman At The Door by Daniel Hurst (manga ebook reader .TXT) 📗

go home and assert himself. Tell her the truth and let her know that she had to trust him, or their relationship could never survive.

I told him to do that because I knew that his wife would not be satisfied with something like that. How could she be? There was no way she could ever trust him fully again after what the woman at the door had told him. It was a few nights later, when I was making a check on Devon’s house, when I saw him packing his things into the back of the car. He was moving out. His wife had made him leave. She could clearly no longer trust him.

That meant their marriage was doomed.

Of course, I had no idea that my plan was going to work, but it did work and with Devon no longer attached to anybody, I was able to have another go at sparking his interest in me. I again asked him for a drink after one of our classes and he accepted the offer this time. Presumably, it was either that or go back on his own to wherever he was staying. One drink led to several, and by the end of the night, Devon was in my bed.

He ended up spending rather a lot of time in there while he went through the divorce process with his wife.

It had worked. I had snared my dream man. I had turned unrequited love into reciprocated love. I had proven all those people on the forums wrong. I wasn’t doomed after falling in love with the wrong person. I was lucky, and I had made it work.

It was one year later, just a few weeks after Devon’s divorce had been finalised, when he left my place early one morning to go to the gym. But he never made it. His car was struck by a drunk driver who had veered onto the wrong side of the road, and that was it. Devon was gone.

He would never have been on that particular road at that particular time if he hadn’t stayed over at mine. But I couldn’t think like that. I had loved him, and I had ensured that his last few months of life had been filled with love. But that didn’t change the fact that I was alone again.

I’d lost everything that I’d worked for. I felt helpless. But I had learnt one thing.

I had learnt how to get a person who wasn’t available.

I had created a system to test even the strongest of marriages.

All I had to do then was share it with the world.

26

REBECCA

It’s nice to no longer be alone in the house after spending most of the weekend on my own. Sam moved back in after we had finished at the pub and he had gone back to the hotel to gather up the few things that he had stored there. He had already paid for that night’s stay, but I’m sure he was more than happy to check out early and get back to his own bed. He’s lying in that bed right now waiting for me to finish up in the bathroom, and I wonder if he’s hoping that we are going to be doing a little more making up when I come to join him under the duvet. I guess we should. It’s only natural for a couple to talk things through first before getting physical to show that things are back to normal. But it will be the first time that I have been intimate with my husband since the suspicions of him being unfaithful first surfaced, and I’m not sure how I’m going to feel when we are in the moment.

Will I be fully engaged with him and able to enjoy myself like I used to? Or will my brain be filled with thoughts of that other woman and how Sam might have been intimate with her?

I pick up my electric toothbrush and go to turn it on, but the battery is flat, reminding me that I forgot to put it on charge when it ran out this morning. It’s hardly surprising that I forgot to do such a simple task when my mind was filled with more important things. I’ll just have to make do with brushing without the battery, using elbow grease instead of electricity to clean off the food and wine I consumed in the pub earlier today.

As I brush my teeth, I stare at my reflection in the mirror and notice how tired I look. It’s been a while since I had a good night’s sleep, and it’s showing. Hopefully, I’ll get a good eight hours tonight before work in the morning, but I won’t hold my breath. It’s not because I might be up late into the night making passionate love to my husband, nor is it because Sam might be snoring loudly when he falls asleep. It’s because my mind is at that stage where it’s so riddled with doubts and worries that it’s impossible to quieten my thoughts and achieve the peace of mind required to drift off into slumber. Even the glasses of wine I consumed today at the pub won’t help me much because my mind becomes even more active when I drink alcohol. As I finish up with my teeth and put the toothbrush onto the charger so that it’s more useful for me the next time I use it, I get one last glance at my haggard face and think about how ‘lucky’ Sam is to be getting to spend the night with me.

Walking back into the bedroom, I see him lying on his side of the bed. He has his hands behind his head and looks very much at home, which of course he is, but maybe he looks a little too comfortable considering that he has spent the last two nights in a hotel because of some troubling things that he can’t explain. But I’m probably just reading too much into